It Takes Two to Make a Cold War

Published: December 8, 1987

To the Editor:

I am almost sure it was the first article by William Safire that I have read with pleasure. I have in mind his Dec. 2 column, ''Danger: Gorby Fever.''

Mr. Safire starts by observing in horror that according to the Gallup Poll, for every one American with a negative view of Mikhail S. Gorbachev, there are two who view him favorably. And he ends with a plea, saying in effect: O.K., I don't rule out that the Russians are not so bad after all, and one can sign agreements with them, but Americans wouldn't risk anything if they proceeded from the opposite premise and continued the old hard line without any agreements.

Why did I feel good reading Mr. Safire and was not even put off by his rudeness and bad manners? I felt good because the column showed very clearly that the sharpest pens of the far right in America are on the run.

Not very long ago, those people were regarded by most Americans as sort of queer, but in the 1980's they suddenly acquired an aura of respectability and began to be treated seriously. I have always suspected that the main reason for their change of image was President Reagan's long coattails, on which they had a free ride for quite a while. But as soon as the President began to move away from ultraconservative orthodoxy from ultraconservative orthodoxy under the pressures of real life, the pundits on the far right started to ring the alarm bells.

But I did not take up the pen to share my assessments of the American far right - my attitude toward those people is predictable and clear. What I would like to discuss is the political options Mr. Safire offers his readers.

If the Soviet Union should accept the proposed rules of the game and devotedly continue the cold war, then, of course, sooner or later, the whole thing would end in a calamity. But at least Mr. Safire's plan would work.The only problem I see here is that the Soviet Union will not pick up the challenge and accept the proposed rules of the game. And then Americans would find themselves in exactly the same position Mr. Safire and his ilk, as he himself writes, are finding themselves in now: history would pass them by, and years from now they would be ''regarded as foot-draggers and sourpusses,'' because almost no one in the world is willing to play the games of the American right. Least of all, the Soviet Union.

And here we have a ''secret weapon'' that will work almost regardless of the American response - we would deprive America of The Enemy. And how would you justify without it the military expenditures that bleed the American economy white, a policy that draws America into dangerous adventures overseas and drives wedges between the United States and its allies, not to mention the loss of American influence on neutral countries? Wouldn't such a policy in the absence of The Enemy put America in the position of an outcast in the international community?

These are the risks of distrust, even though Mr. Safire bills this approach as ''being on the safe side.'' Mr. Safire preys on common wisdom, of course, which holds that in this imperfect world of ours, it's better to float with the tide and go on doing what we have all been doing for the last 40 years. But this is just the surest way to oblivion. And no matter which aspect one may take - military, political or economic - it is simply impossible to imagine the extrapolation of the current trends for another 40 years.

And I have an impression that in his guts William Safire also feels this. Maybe that is why he is so nervous? GEORGI A. ARBATOV Moscow, Dec. 3, 1987 The writer is director of the Soviet Institute for the Study of the United States and Canada.